NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which is attached to the belly of the Perseverance Rover, has a small remnant from the Wright brothers’ first aircraft that flew more than 100 years earlier.
A small amount of material from the wings of the Wright brothers’ plane, known as the Flyer, is now aboard Ingenuity, which arrived on Mars on February 18, NASA revealed in a statement on Tuesday.
The agency writes that the small cloth material was wrapped with tape around a cable under the solar panel of the helicopter.
The Wright brothers, NASA noted, used the same type of material – an unbleached muslin called ‘Pride of the West’ – to cover the glider and airplane wings from 1901.
“While Ingenuity was going to try the first powered, controlled flight on another planet, the first powered, controlled flight on earth took place on December 17, 1903 on the windswept dunes of Kill Devil Hill, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville and Wilbur Wright covered 120 feet in 12 seconds during the first flight. The Wright brothers flew four flights that day, each longer than the previous one, “NASA said in a statement.
A small amount of the material that covered one of the wings of the Wright brothers ‘plane, known as the Flyer, during the first flight, is now aboard Ingenuity,’ the statement added.
The Associated Press reports that the material, which is the size of a postage stamp, took the 300 million mile expedition to Mars with the blessing of the great-grandparents and great-grandson of the Wright brothers. Carillon Historical Park, which donated the piece to NASA.
“Wilbur and Orville Wright will be happy to know that a small piece of their 1903 Wright Flyer I, the machine that launched the Space Age by a quarter of a mile, will be launching on Mars again!” Amanda Wright Lane and Stephen Wright said in a statement that the park provided the AP.
Another piece of material, in addition to a small splinter of wood from the Wright Flyer, was also aboard the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in July 1969, NASA noted.
Ingenuity is on course to embark on the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet no earlier than April 8, NASA wrote. Before the Ingenuity can embark on its first flight, the helicopter and its crew must meet a series of “discouraging milestones”, NASA said in a statement.
For now, the helicopter remains stuck to the abdomen of perseverance, NASA wrote.
On July 30, perseverance from Cape Canaveral, Fla., Launched into space on a mission to search for signs of past life on the red planet. On February 18, the Rover successfully landed on Mars and became the fifth Rover that NASA sent to the red planet.